Roger W. Hicks
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Roger W. Hicks Feb 01, 2009 8 comments

The Germans notoriously have a word for the guilty pleasure of enjoying another’s misfortune or embarrassment: Schadenfreude.

Pro Techniques
Roger W. Hicks Mar 01, 2010 0 comments

There are plenty of reasons to eschew perfect sharpness. A classic application was to suppress lines and wrinkles, or just for a light, airy mood: as Tallulah Bankhead once said, “They used to photograph Shirley Temple through gauze. They should photograph me through linoleum.” Another reason is to create the sense of something half-remembered, imperfectly limned in the picture as in...

Lenses
Roger W. Hicks Aug 01, 2007 0 comments

"My" Leica M8--a loaner from Leica for review--came with a 50mm f/2 bar-coded Summicron. The 18x27mm sensor turns this into a 67mm lens in 35mm terms: rather long for someone whose standard lens on 35mm has for decades been a 35mm. So as soon as I got the M8, I started using other, older lenses. There is, after all, an enormous choice, from 12mm (18mm...

Roger W. Hicks Apr 01, 2008 1 comments

What is the appeal of "retro" photography? I mean, surely, hasn't everyone "gone digital" nowadays? And equally surely, wouldn't you admit that the three new ZV Classic lenses from Zeiss, for traditional Hasselblads, are as retro as they come?
The answer is no, on both counts.

First, film has no more been killed by digital than...

Lenses
Roger W. Hicks May 01, 2007 0 comments

Quality, according to the old saying, doesn't cost: it pays. These new manual-focus, Nikon-fit "ZF" lenses are a perfect illustration of that saying. Sure, they are built by Hirofumi Kobayashi in Japan, but they are built to Zeiss standards from Zeiss designs, and they feel like the Zeiss lenses of yesteryear: smooth, solid, beautifully finished, with a lot of...